‘We are driven by our Global CEO's vision to be the world's most-wanted media agency’

It was on November 9, 2017 that Wavemaker officially opened up for business in India after a long-drawn merger of MEC and Maxus. Five years later, the company has emerged as one of the most promising GroupM agencies, winning accolades and awards for its innovative campaigns, including the much-talked-about Cadbury’s 2021 Diwali campaign with Shah Rukh Khan. CEO-South Asia Ajay Gupte, who took the charge barely six weeks before the Covid pandemic hit the world, is undoubtedly a happy man as the agency today works with some of the most sought-after brands such as Mondelez, Loreal, Dream 11, Netflix, Tata Consumer Pvt Ltd and Vodafone Idea.

As Wavemaker celebrates its fifth anniversary today, exchange4media Editor Naziya Alvi Rahman caught up with Gupte to talk about the journey, business, industry trends and more.

Edited Excerpts:

Wavemaker has been doing well ever since its inception, and most remarkably, did not slow down even during the pandemic. What magic formula have you used to transform the company into a new-age agency?

It's all part of a plan that we are meticulously working towards. Firstly, we're all very driven by our Global CEO Toby Jenner's vision to be the world's most-wanted media agency, and we all very passionately want to make sure that we hold the mantle of being India's most-wanted media agency.

There are two key elements to this. First is our basic DNA, which has always been about being innovative and trying to do something different. This goes right from the Maxus days, and in India, Maxus has been a large part of Wavemaker. Back then, Maxus was one of the most awarded agencies for many years. I was a part of Maxus as the head of its operations in 2005, and we had a content team right then. Not too many media agencies then thought beyond radio, television and a little bit of digital. I think digital was at 1 per cent spending those days. But we had strong digital and content teams.

The second part of it is the wonderful leadership team that I'm fortunate to have with me. Whether it is the head of digital, head of content, head of strategy, office heads or head of trading, they're all possibly the best in their field and are passionately trying to grow and transform the business to stay ahead of the curve. For Wavemaker, the pandemic, like you said, was kind of an opportunity to stitch together all our capabilities for our clients.

The other advantage we had is this vast basket of clients that we work with. It's so wide and broad that it allowed us to deliver different kinds of expertise, learn from it and then take it to the other clients. And hence, we were able to really add value to our clients' business. That is what has really worked extremely well for us.

Retaining talent has become a very difficult task for most leaders in the industry. How has Wavemaker been able to do that? What kind of future-ready practices have you brought into the organization?

It's a very real challenge that the industry faces today in terms of retaining talent. Because your talent is not only restricted to other media agencies which are your competitors, but other areas like clients/brands, start-ups and media companies also offer massive opportunities, and therefore it is important for us to make it exciting for people to stay. People don't only work for money. They want to work to be able to do something different, to be able to add to their careers. They want to solve the problem. They want to add to their experiences and want to build successful careers. People also want to be on the winning side. They want to work where there is exciting work happening. They want to work where there is differentiated work happening, where there is recognition. With the kind of work that we've been doing, I'm really proud to say that our retention levels are the highest amongst our peers.

What is your current attrition rate?

Our attrition rate is around 24 per cent, which is fairly low in this industry. There are a few things that go behind it. From the talent perspective, it's about wanting to work at a place that gives opportunities to grow and learn and one which is doing well. We've built capabilities in areas unheard of possibly a few years ago and not too many agencies have invested in. We've got audience scientists like content creators, copywriters, social media specialists, social media analysts, and we've got hard-core data analytics people. There's such a vast platform for people to work in. Also, we really believe in allowing people to do things that they want to do. In our company, there have been instances when senior resources working in a particular field have come up and said that they would like to build this practice for us. And we said, okay, go ahead. We had the ability to invest. We're building expertise. We are expanding our lead against everybody else and I think we're building capability there.

I think factors such as the opportunity to do something different, the opportunity to learn, and a lot of experience (thanks to our clients who do differentiated work) have created the attraction for us and this shows in our attrition levels.

You helped clients sail through the pandemic. But this year’s festive season again did not turn out to be as good as we would have wanted it to be for various reasons like global recessions or drying up of investments. What did you do for your clients differently to help them overcome this?

I think the consumer is a lot more optimistic than the brands now. Wherever I speak with clients, they say the off-take has been very good. However, there are challenges with margins, with the bottom line and also there is the global pessimism that is affecting us. Now, when budgets are tight, clients look for maximum return on every investment. So that is the key. We've been able to deliver that in many ways, starting right from the attribution journey and then being able to help our clients create the first-party data collection ecosystem. Collecting data, enhancing it and then being able to activate the data is something that we started with a couple of clients, and now I'm happy to say that we have 25 clients on that. We are making communication addressable. It is accountable and there is guaranteed return on investment, and therefore, it helps our clients maximize revenue from their investments.

The second part of it is engaging with the consumers. This becomes a lot more important because of the amount of options they have and their short attention span. Therefore, one needs to create content which is digital and OTT friendly, and we have the ability to really put that together for clients.

E-commerce is another opportunity that we have created for our clients to invest in. So, whether it is better attribution, better addressability, better engagement with the consumer or creating opportunities for commerce, we have been able to actually work across the spectrum for our clients. All of this is eventually helping them maximize return on their investments, which is a great support in this kind of a time.

You mentioned that budgets were tight, how tight were they?

Typically, you see a massive upside getting into the festival period. You see a definite upsurge happening, maybe a couple of months or 45 days before festive season and then lasting for about a month after. I think that massive upsurge has not happened in that way.

So, was the upsurge marginal?

Yes, it has been marginal. It hasn't been the way you expect it to just jump up. There has not been an upsurge compared to a normal year (not the pandemic years). Normally, you would expect the festive season to give you a lot better impact. I think that has been a little subdued. It is better than a normal month certainly, but not to the levels that you usually expect to see.

What according to you were the reasons for this slowdown, and how long do you think this will continue?

It's a combination of pressure on margins, due to (high) raw material costs, and the drying up of investments in our start-ups from global markets. I think a combination of these two, along with a pessimism in global markets, have ensured that the festive season was not as big as we thought it would be.

We have a challenge at hand, at least for the first quarter, and I hope things will get better after that because, like I said, the consumer is still optimistic, and we are in a market which is growing and there is a lot of opportunities. I think people will eventually see the benefit of investing in marketing and communication.

You also spoke about creating shorter content for younger people. Can you give us some examples? The Mother Dairy campaign with Zakir Khan is a beautiful piece, what more have you done and what more are you planning to do in the coming days?

That is one of our flagship pieces of work. There have been so many more. There is one we did for Perfetti and Dharma Productions. We created a two-part short video. It was a girl-meet-boy plot beautifully done in the typical Dharma Productions style.

There are loads of content that we've been creating for our clients. There is Spirit of Scotland with Kunal Kapoor. Apart from that, there have been a lot of tech-enabled work across the board. There are some games being created with AR for some of our clients. It's with the QR code. And there are other small pieces of content. There is one piece of work for MTR, for example, where we have worked with the captain of the Indian women's cricket team.

Tell us about your next Cadbury-Shahrukh Khan-like work that will make us proud at Cannes yet again

A wonderful piece of work for Cadbury, aimed at helping small retailers and small hawkers to start selling online, is already out. It's an excellent piece of work and a big story for us. Apart from that, there's some more great work. There's a piece of data-connected work that we've done for Luminous. For this, we tied up with the data source which tells us when the power goes off in a particular locality, and we use that input to communicate to users in that area saying why don't you get Luminous? And I think it has worked extremely well. This is a wonderful example of data and creativity working together which we are really proud of.

Coming to numbers, how has the business been this year, considering the fact that a lot of pitches that did not happen in 2020, were finally executed in 2021 or early 2022?

We have won a lot of business this year. What makes me happier is the fact that a lot of these wins have been in new areas. So, the growth is organic, from our existing clients, as well as new clients. Whether it is performance, e-commerce, social analytics or advocacy, we are winning a lot of business in new areas. Clients are definitely seeing us bringing benefit onto the table.

In terms of percentage, possibly, we have added about 10% of our billings through new business, which is phenomenal.

There is recession in the global markets, but India has been, so far, doing decent. Does it add to your pressure to perform extra to cover up for the global numbers?

India is a very important market in the global scheme. We are among the top five markets today for most industries. So the world is definitely looking towards us and our numbers. Fortunately, despite all the pessimism and negativity, we are still growing, and at a fairly fast pace. Therefore, there’s a lot of hope and a lot of expectation from India. So there is a lot of pressure. But I think it is good pressure. It’s for a good reason. It's for the reason that we are growing. And I think that keeps us going. It tells us that we are leading the pack and doing very well. So, it’s a wonderful time to be in India and wonderful time to be doing well in India.

Transcription Credit: Tanya Dwivedi